Study on the short fault isolation of cabled ocean observatory

With the development of ocean exploration, cabled ocean observatory has gained more and more attention for its continuous, long-term and large scale. The reliability of the undersea instrument is one of the most important characteristics of the system, which determined the useful service life of the seafloor observatory. Because of the complicated environment on the seafloor, many faults may occur during the operation of the system, such as ground fault, leak fault, short fault, and so on. So, the undersea fault isolation of the system over its planned life is one of the most challenging issues in the design of cabled ocean observatory. This paper analysis the reasons and positions of the short faults during the operation of the undersea system and discussed the methods to isolate the fault parts from other normal parts. A sea trial in South China Sea is presented in this paper.